


no lover’s lane in brooklyn

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene, References to Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:22:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24190516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: There are moments sometimes, when Simon is punching a straw through a bag of blood like a Capri Sun or when he catches the flourish of a rune under Clary’s collar, that he’s almost forcibly transported to their life before. It feels more like a dream than anything else, this long wonderful dream that Simon is sorry to have woken up from.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Simon Lewis
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21





	no lover’s lane in brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> Set shortly after 2x08, "Love is a Devil."

They sleep together the night of the party. Simon didn’t think it would happen that fast — honestly didn’t think it would _ever_ happen — imagining instead some 1950s fantasy, weeks of kissing and poodle skirts and soda pop, sharing pins and getting pinned in the back of a car in lover’s lane. Never mind that there’s no lover’s lane in Brooklyn. If it was ever going to happen, Simon was planning on candlelight and mood music (a curated playlist he might have curated back in sophomore year), every kiss awkward and sweet. But their lives have been fast-tracked since Clary’s birthday, so they have sex the night of the party, t-minus twelve hours since she preempted his love confession with a kiss. 

Simon helps Clary out of her gown, gently lowering the zipper and easing her straps off her shoulders. She unfastens his cufflinks and kisses him for every shirt button she wrests free. It’s like prom, or something. How he’d secretly wanted their prom — not even six months ago, Jesus — to go. It hadn’t. Clary’s real date had ignored her completely, instead getting so blazed with his friends that he passed out at one of the tables with his open mouth mashed against the tablecloth. Simon remembers Clary’s face, the blazing fury in her tear-filled eyes. And he remembers how good it felt when she turned to him and took his hand, dragging him out of the rented hall in his rented tux so they could go home and watch movies. He felt all kinds of Molly Ringwald. 

He never expected this. Shedding their clothes in a boathouse and laying down on a rug, her shivering a little against his cold, cold skin. 

There are moments sometimes, when Simon is punching a straw through a bag of blood like a Capri Sun or when he catches the flourish of a rune under Clary’s collar, that he’s almost forcibly transported to their life before. It feels more like a dream than anything else, this long wonderful dream that Simon is sorry to have woken up from. He remembers loitering by her locker, the inside of which was a riotous mess of forbidden art supplies. He remembers bagged lunches in the cafeteria, the sticky floor and the smell of it, like cheap cleanser and cheaper lunch meat. He remembers staying late to work on the spring play together, her painting backdrops with a smudge of paint on her cheek and him in the band pit. He remembers eating Chinese food sitting on the floor in the hallway with their friends, the friends they don’t see anymore: Paul who was a bigger nerd than Simon, Sami with her multi-colored hair, Maureen who transferred senior year from somewhere upstate. He remembers walking home together, doing homework together, letting Clary copy off him in English, watching movies long into the night, eating popcorn, falling asleep with their heads on each other’s shoulders. Calling each other as soon as they got home and passing out with their phones fused to their cheeks. Texting first thing in the morning. Inseparable. 

There’s a little bit of that in this — maybe more than a little. 

“Is _this_ weird?” he wants to know, teasing, as he touches her bare collarbones in the chill boathouse. She’s come over in gooseflesh and he can see, faintly, that her nipples are hard through the molded cups of her strapless bra. It’s no different than seeing her in a bikini — which he has, because they used to go to the beach together and now Simon will never lay out in the sun again — except for how it’s completely different.

Clary’s pale orange hair spreads out on the rug beneath them. She can’t stop touching his chest and his stomach, sliding her hands inside his open shirt. He could never have conceived of that, a world where Clary couldn’t stop touching him. “No,” she says, and her voice is gentle for such a formidable girl. “You’re my best friend.”

When his dad died and his mom started drinking (again, though Simon was too little to know there was a time before he came along, a downward spiral that almost got her kicked out of law school), Luke and Jocelyn would pick him up from school most days. They made sure he did his homework and ate dinner. Jocelyn cooked chicken cacciatore five days in a row just to make him happy and Clary didn’t once complain about it, and that’s the kind of love that lives inside Simon for those Frays. Whatever their name is now.

His mom didn’t cop to having a problem for a long time, so it was years before she stopped drinking completely. Instead she’d indulge in these small shows of control — a month without a sip; just one glass of wine at night. Locking up the liquor cabinet and handing off the key to Jocelyn only to stop at a bar after work for a chardonnay. Simon couldn’t fathom what made her want it so bad until he became a vampire and he had to stop himself from putting his teeth into the neck of someone he loved.

He’d tried, before, to figure it out. He and Clary busted into the liquor cabinet when they were fifteen and had the apartment to themselves, Becky out with friends and his mom working late. They got so totally smashed that Simon almost told Clary he loved her, but she interrupted his soul-bearing by throwing up on the living room sofa. They spent the night puking in the bathroom, Simon holding her hair back and Clary catching his glasses before they fell off his face. His mom stopped drinking for real after that. She started going to AA. She’s been sober for three years and those three years feel like a millennia ago to Simon, like a life that happened to a different guy whose memories he just happens to have.

That life feels a little bit closer with Clary here, because there’s no part of it she doesn’t know. Simon’s bones and blood and cells are different; Clary is covered in angelic calligraphy and he’s watched her turn her resolve into a weapon. But she’s still here and he’s still here. She knows all his references and how he took his coffee, when he took coffee. She remembers the boy who couldn’t land a punch and the day will come when she’s the only one who does. There’s a whole lifetime in a kiss from her.

So maybe it isn’t too fast. And he can still check some things off his list. He gets up stumbling, the most graceless vampire in the five boroughs, and delights in Clary’s laughter as he struggles to find his speaker. He can give them a soundtrack. He smiles at her, laying there with his suit jacket for a pillow; bites his lip when she sits up to unhook her bra in the back. “What are you waiting for, Lewis?” 

Her. He’s always been waiting for her.


End file.
